In the latest 1st Part Aircraft Developer stream, it has been confirmed that the in-sim Marketplace for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will be delayed and therefore not available at launch. Jorg Neumann, Head of Flight Simulator, said that this delay is to ensure that developers have a bit more time to work on their existing add-on collection before opening it up to newcomers who try flight simulation through Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
A new ‘Dev Alpha’ build was issued to developers today which fixed some issues that were reported by the third-party development community. We have known for a while that backwards compatibility was generally going to work for “most” products, and whilst overall results have been “generally good”, there have been instances where minor issues have risen.
Multiple developers supposedly emailed Microsoft to express concern that their products just need a bit more time and didn’t want to run the risk of ruining their reputation by rushing to the in-sim Marketplace, which is why the decision has been made to delay the initial launch of the Marketplace for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
To be clear, anyone can still access their library of products from Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 in the new simulator and immediately add it to their new simulator. Of course, it should be noted that developers may not be able to support you if their product doesn’t work immediately, so do take note of that. Equally, if you have products in your ‘community’ folder outside of Marketplace purchases, you will be able to copy and paste them there too. But again, be mindful that just because something can be copied over, doesn’t mean it will be compatible day one.
We have already heard from multiple developers such as Parallel 42 who have said that they have confidence things will be compatible in time, it may take a bit longer than initially expected due to the changes in the new simulator. Some products will yield better results than others and your milage will vary depending on what product and how the developer made them.
Finally, Neumann said that he expects this delay to be just a few weeks, so not a major period of time in the grand scheme of things. This delay relates specifically to the FS2024 Marketplace and will not impact the current FS2020 in-sim Marketplace.
